


Domestic Devotion

by Josey (cestus)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-26
Updated: 2012-07-26
Packaged: 2017-11-10 19:27:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/469823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cestus/pseuds/Josey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grieving is a process.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Domestic Devotion

She spends five days in tears and then starts cleaning. They were shinobi, jounin, they both had teams to train and duties to the village to fulfil. Housekeeping came a very poor third. Now she has nothing, and so she cleans. Shikamaru calls around at least once a week, each time bringing some small gift for herself or her unborn child. She hates him. When she ran into him at the cemetery that day and he told her the fate of the Akatsuki, she'd wanted to smack his face and the urge hasn't subsided. Who is he to take away her right to revenge? Who is he to fill a role that is hers by right and rage? Instead she goes home and cleans.

The apartment is now spotless. Should she care to, she could serve a nine course banquet on her living room floor. But she does not. She rarely feels like eating at all and when she does, she stands over the sink and shovels it into her mouth so as not to make a mess. And then she washes the dishes. Twice. And leaves them to stand on the drainer.

Hinata watches, she knows. Watches and worries. Kurenai changes the sheets and washes the dirty ones by hand, scrubbing them in the sink with hands already chapped from long immersion and harsh chemicals. They are hanging on the line by the time she realises it is raining and she hasn't the heart to bring them in. That night she sleeps on the couch. It smells of polish and oh so slightly of him. The sheets stay outside for a week.

Kakashi drops by and they sit and stare at each other for nearly an hour before he gets up and leaves without saying a word. They have nothing to say to each other. Loss is a language spoken in its own tongue, comprehensible only in the silences it leaves behind. She takes the opportunity to scrub the woodwork, erasing every fingerprint from every door before moving on to the windows. She can see her face in them when she finishes, backlit in the night by the glowing street lights.

There's a part of her that knows this isn't normal, that this is a reaction to losing him, but that part is overwhelmed by her grim determination to make everything perfect. They'd had so little time together but what they'd managed to claim, they had always shared and their home was their sanctuary. 

Kurenai's dreams and memories are full of him - in the kitchen drying the pots, eyes dancing as he spun some tall tale or shared some scrap of gossip. Silhouetted against an egg-shell sky, cigarette dangling and head angled to avoid scorching his armful of laundry, while she fights the playful breeze and they laugh. Of him pulling faces at her while he washes the windows, feet glowing with chakra as he clings to the wall.

Finally she goes to Tsunade and asks for a new housing allocation, 'for convenience', 'for the child', and some duty, however small and insignificant. Tsunade looks at her through narrowed eyes and she is grateful that Shizune is outside the office. Pity would break her, she thinks. After her first day at the academy, she returns to her new house, kicks her shoes under the couch and drops her coat to the floor. Later, when she stumbles numb and exhausted to bed, she leaves the take out containers where they lie.

They had been jounin. There had been two teams to train and their duties to the village. Housekeeping had always come a poor third but the time they'd spent together while doing it had been precious. Without him, there seems little point to it any more.


End file.
